Special events made for some boring nights
Serious-minded academics may disagree with me, perhaps vehemently, but I maintain the purpose of all television, movies, theater, music, dance, and other diversions in to entertain.
If enlightenment, education, and life-changing epiphany follow, it’s a bonus or more, but the main job is to give people a good time, an intelligent, well-staged good time if possible.
Twice last week, special programs that appeared on television were as boring as a seed catalog. One can say that they were each news or ceremonial events and not subject to the same criteria as a regular show, but both of them were put together by a broadcasting company, in each case ABC, that should have known better about TV production and taken time to make sure its viewers had something of substance and quality to watch.
In ABC’s defense, the two programs, this year’s Oscar ceremony and two nights of the NFL draft, are orchestrated by outside bodies that have business to transact and some say in what will happen on the screen. Awards have to handed out, and the names of the drafted have to be read. Some drama and suspense are involved, but they come in irregular doses it’s the job of television producers to fill with something of interest.
The Oscars tallied the lowest ratings in years. Some of that is attributable to a year when people did not have the same access to movies as usual. Even I, a movie buff and film historian, had to keep a sharp lookout for releases and figure out where to find them and how to watch them.
Unfamiliarity with nominated fare or performances is only part of the answer because in most years, the majority of the audience doesn’t know about half the films or recognize more than a handful of actors.
What’s missing lately is a strong dose of Hollywood glamor and some show biz razzmatazz. Add to that absence, the proclivity of current stars to use their time at the mike to make political statement that make seem cool and fashionable to some but annoy others because, agree or disagree with the speaker, they are not within the purpose of the Oscar ceremony and register as preachy in a trendy oh-what-a-good boyam-I manner rather than something useful or inspiring.
Regina King, first up on the 2021 Oscar show, didn’t even joke when she said people will be grabbing for their remotes and she launched into her moment of sentimental righteousness.
I have interviewed Regina King and like her. She is intelligent and has a sense of humor, but she killed the Oscar ceremony from the get-go. I am too curious about who receives the Academy Award to tune out, but as invited to by King, many did.
Getting past King, the show never took off as entertainment. I liked watching the awards and the fashions, but nothing in between even tried to amuse or address the need to put on a television program.
High-flown explanations of film crafts, and even personal stories about how presenters became interested in movies didn’t create joy and wonder. They stupefied. Every Oscar show has five songs it can present, musical scores in can play, and key scenes from the year’s films to show.
On this year’s Oscars, no musical numbers were performed, and few excerpts from nominated movies were shown. Producers seemed to make a point of keeping things solemn, trite, and ho-hum.
Let’s face it. Glenn Close doing “Da Butt” in a ridiculous game presided over by Tyler Perry isn’t enough of a high point to win praise.
At least, Perry, when he became philosophical during his acceptance of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, talked about “the middle” and eschewed extremes. Thanks also to the European and Asian recipients who kept matters to movies and families.
As for the NFL Draft, I couldn’t believe the clownish, idiotic, uninteresting patter than went on between picks. This wasn’t television. I was chaos. Commentators spoke over each other and seemed to compete for who could be the most fawning and least incisive. The show had no pace, no style. It was a freefor-all that never provided anything to watch or hear except when an actual pick was made.
No one involved with the NFL should be proud of his or her performance let alone the poor pacing, clutching for things to say, and high energy antics that seemed to be borrowed from “Holy Moly.”
If this is the best ABC or television can do, perhaps even I, a fan who likes to see things as they happen, will get a newspaper or Google to find out who was rewarded after the fact.
Wrong-placed praise
About the only thing that irks me when I listen to some jazz stations is when a deejay or host gives credit for composing a song to the performer or arranger rather than the actual writer.
One song “Feeling Good” gets sung a lot, and on two different occasions, both on television talent competitions, I’ve heard it attributed to people who famously sang it but who didn’t have the slightest hand in writing it.
On one who, “Feeling Good” was introduced as Michael Bublé’s. On last week’s ‘The Voice,” even the subtitle read “Feeling Good,” Nina Simone.
Yes, Bublé recorded a rousing version of the song, and Simone, as usual, provides a definitive rendition, but the tune was written for a 1964 Broadway show, “The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd,” by that musical’s composers, Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse.
How about a little accurate credit where it’s due?
Cooper does well on ‘Jeopardy!’
No host grew as much as Anderson Cooper did during his two-week as the host of “Jeopardy!”
At the end of his first week, I wrote Cooper off as one who knows his television announcing skills well but seemed a tad colorless in keeping “Jeopardy!” lively.
By the second week, the last episode of which was pre-empted by the NFL Draft (Hrrumph!), Cooper seemed to find a stride and was both more easygoing in his banter with the contestants and quicker with apt comments about answers and situations that
pertained to each show. Though not a fan of Cooper in general, I think he would be my second choice, after Ken Jennings, to take over for the late Alex Trebek when “Jeopardy!” resumes with a permanent host.
Starting tonight (7 p.m., Channel 6), the acting host is CBS News’s Bill Whitaker, a current staple of the Big Eye’s primetime news program, “60 Minutes.”
While on the subject of “Jeopardy!,” a brouhaha developed last week when a hand gesture of three-time champion Kelly Donahue was interpreted as a sign used by white supremacists. I believe Donahue when he says he had no political motive in holding three fingers diagonally against his tie on his last appearance. He says he was indicating that he had won three games and apologized if his message was misconstrued.
The whole controversy is one more molehill, if even a molehill, turned into a mountain by people who see wrongdoing everywhere and pounce on it with glee. I look forward to a day when people stop taking every complaint seriously and jumping on bandwagons of outrage until and unless it’s clear something significant happened.
Youth heroes die
Early television started the tradition of shows featuring families, which necessitated the hiring of children to play key roles.
Throughout TV history, there have been hundreds of kids who became household favorites, from Jerry Mathers and Ron Howard in the ‘50s to the youngsters we saw grow into young adults on shows like “Modern Family,” “The Conners,” and “The Goldbergs.”
When I was a child, at the halfway mark of a previous century, I had two particular favorites among that period’s juvenile actors, Lee Aaker who played Corporal Rusty on “Rin Tin Tin,” and Johnny Crawford, a Mouseketeer who I couldn’t wait to see each week as Mark McCain on “The Rifleman.”
My fan’s affection for both these child actors lasts to this day. I stop at “Rifleman” reruns, so I can watch the young Johnny Crawford learn right from wrong in a nascent West from his father, Lucas McCain, played by Chuck Connors.
Coincidentally, both Aaker and Crawford died in April, Aaker at the beginning of the month, Crawford on Thursday, the 29th.
I never met either of them, not as obvious a circumstance as you might think considering I’ve been interviewing people from television and television history for more than 50 years and have met many of the actors I enjoyed as a child.
Nonetheless, I felt a loss on the occasion of both their deaths.
Anyone who remembers me from by days in single digits might recall I had a Rin Tin Tin doll I took with me everywhere. There’s a picture of me holding the dog at a Thanksgiving dinner. Invariably, people comment and say, “What a beautiful dog! What was his name?” I say “Rinty” and add the dog is not real but a toy and part of my attachment to “Rin Tin Tin,” which I watched religiously, not only enjoying Lee Aaker but John Y. Brown, who played the head of the fort, Lt. Rip Masters.
My attachment to “Rin Tin Tin” and Corporal Rusty was so great, I had a Rusty costume I frequently put on after school and wore for three consecutive Halloweens. Yes, I would pretend to be another child soldier at the fort that took Rusty in when his parents were killed and would invent dialogue with Rusty and Rip and others from their home base at Fort Apache.
I was also an imaginary friend of Mark McCain.
There was something thoughtful about Johnny Crawford’s approach to the role that I continue to see in reruns today. Like other boys in television series, he got into trouble from which his father would have to rescue him. He also witnessed a lot as the West was going from wild to more civilized and organized. Mr. Crawford’s Mark seemed so understanding and mature. He was also unafraid of being a good kid, one who could accept situations and learn from them.
Lee Aaker did not continue acting after childhood. Reports say he died destitute and almost unrecognized. This makes me particularly sad because I can still envision scenes from “Rin Tin Tin” and of course, remember and picture Mr. Aaker as a child.
Johnny Crawford remained in the entertainment field and continued to act – You can see him in shows from just a few years ago. – while building a career as a composer and musician.
Every generation has its nostalgic shows and nostalgic figures. While I well remember Tommy Rettig, Billy Gray, Jon Provost, Paul Peterson, Rusty Hamer, Angela Cartwright, Shelley Fabares, Tony Dow, Dwayne Hickman, Jay North, Lori Martin, Noreen Corcoran, and a raft of Mouseketeers, the two that mattered most and for whom I had the most affection were Lee Aaker and Johnny Crawford.
May both rest in peace. As long as the “Howdy Doody” and “Mickey Mouse Club” generation lives, they will remembered.